Recent episodes

Yesterday we were talking about how bank ethicists measure success (by boredom), today we're looking at a way President Trump and Republicans could actually make banking a little more boring. Gary Cohn, one of Trump's economic advisers, told Bloomberg he'd be okay with the financial sector going back to the days when investment banks did trading and underwriting of securities, and commercial banks did banking as the rest of us know it. We'll talk about it, plus the unusual way Spotify could go public and injecting a little geographic diversity in the start-up world.

The New York Fed reports that total outstanding household debt in this country is juuuust about where it was in 2008. Remember 2008? We're thinking about debt a little differently now, though. Then, a conversation with a big bank ethicist, who tells us what he does and how he measures success. Plus, why Panera's worth $7.2 billion to the equity group JAB, and another dispatch from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The conventional wisdom about a lot of Rust Belt cities in this country is, well, look at the name. Their economies are shot, thanks to the steady loss of manufacturing jobs, and voters there are counting on President Trump to bring them back. It's the premise of our series "The Big Promise." But in Erie, Pennsylvania, there's something else going on. Plus, we'll look at the growing list of advertisers pulling away from "The O'Reilly Factor" and Jenna Lyons' departure from J.Crew.

President Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan is still in the nascent stages, but it’s a key part of his promise to create millions of jobs. Once upon a time, infrastructure was this country’s job. After the Great Depression, the government put millions of Americans to work building stuff. We'll look back at that history and what lessons it might hold for Trump's ambitious infrastructure plan. Plus: Auto earnings, Trump's visit from Xi Jinping and an exit interview with Fed Gov. Daniel Tarullo.

More than a dozen major disasters — mudslides, floods, a huge bridge collapse in Atlanta this week — have hit the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office. There'a few federal agencies in charge of clean-up and relief, but it's not yet clear how they'll change in this new administration. For example, FEMA doesn't have a director yet, even as trump has proposed hundreds of millions in cuts. Plus: A Federal reserve governor visits West Virginia and the latest on Trump's executive orders. And, as always, we'll wrap up the week in business and economic news.

Ivanka Trump has officially become and unpaid assistant to the president with an office in the White House and a security clearance. But what does it take to get security clearance? How much does it cost to grant security clearance? We got some answers. Also from Washington: The Congressional Budget Office released a report today projecting the United States reaching a record level of publicly held debt by 2017. We take a look at how demographic shifts have contributed to this problem. We also talk with NFL players Malcolm Jenkins and Anquan Boldin, about their campaign for criminal justice reform.